


my past in silhouettes

by leavemetothewolves



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4924714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leavemetothewolves/pseuds/leavemetothewolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theirs was the smell of dusty vinyl stores and clean linen sheets. It was the sound of absently-plucked guitar strings, the taste of rain and love and laughter. It was a feeling of belonging somewhere, with someone, and it was nothing anyone could take from them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my past in silhouettes

**Author's Note:**

> "These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder which, as they kiss, consume."  
> –Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene VI
> 
> (Title from Sad Song by We the Kings)  
> So, this idea's been kicking around in my head since Death of a Bachelor came out, so a little while in coming and it turned out so short omfg. *cri*
> 
> If you're prone to crying while reading fanfiction, please grab tissues.  
> And chocolate. 
> 
> I love the wives of bandom, and for the purpose of fanfics I usually try not to include them, so the way of not naming her and simply keeping her refrences to pronouns is my way of trying to keep her out of it as possible, sorry for any confusion!
> 
> This isn't true, isn't real (I know, sad, right?) and if you got here by googling your name or one of your friend's names, please don't read any further.

Brendon had never met anyone like him before; didn’t really think he ever would. Ryan was someone different entirely, a class all to himself.

Trying not to think about it never works. The memories were always there, lurking in the back of his mind; the cobwebs in the corner, the ghosts that haunted his every step. The ghosts of music and laughter and friendship, now only flickering half-heartedly in Spencer’s half smiles and the occasional text from Jon. 

Never him, though. Never Ryan.

Ryan was lost to him, a simple memory that was dangerous and stupid and enticing, a bad idea wrapped in even worse nostalgia. 

It’s dangerous, remembering things, but it’s not exactly like he could help it. The images wouldn’t leave him: the slim boy with his small smile and rare laughs that seemed to light up the room. Calloused fingers and lingering hands and burning glances that set colour high in his cheeks.  
Theirs was the smell of dusty vinyl stores and clean linen sheets. It was the sound of absently-plucked guitar strings, the taste of rain and love and laughter. It was a feeling of belonging somewhere, with someone, and it was nothing anyone could take from them. It was all these things, these beautiful things, but then it was dashed like glass on the linoleum tiling of the kitchen floor. 

It turned, instead, to the smell of bile and alcohol, mixing with the taste of salty tears that tracked down his face as he leaned his head against the questionably sticky wall of the club bathroom stall. It turned to the colour of tear-stained cheeks and clenched hands and baggy eyes. The sound of ringing silences and 2 AM phone calls and the monotone voice of his answering machine. It was another drink, maybe two, and the numbing sensation that settled into his bones as he shook a couple more blue ovals than prescription called for out into his palm. 

It turned to shaky nights, with a little too much of something or other coursing through his veins, when all he wanted to do was pick up the goddamn phone and call him, but something – be it pride, hurt, whatever the fuck you want to call it – stopped him. 

Some might’ve called it desperation. Brendon called it getting over him. 

And he did; he did get over him, and maybe it took longer than it should have, making it took a few years (or five or six), but it happened; it happened, and for that he was grateful.

He didn’t see Ryan’s face in hers, or bite back his name anymore. Those days were dead and gone, and he was happy, the right kind of happy; the one that mixes with the bad but still comes out glowing because that’s how life is supposed to be. The good things outweigh the bad, and sometimes they don’t do that on their own, sometimes you have to make them.

All things have to end eventually, some more violently than others, but they all do end. Ryan had been a spark, an all-consuming fire; he’d been a dangerously open flame and all Brendon had done was put out that flame. His life was a slow burn now, warm and inviting, contrary to the catastrophic hellfire that had been Ryan. 

And maybe her smile wasn’t always enough, and maybe he missed him. Maybe he thought he could deal with chaos for a change, but then the smell of her perfume would always bring him right back to the present, and past regrets would loosen their grip on him and he’d shake himself back to the present, back to her and the solid foundation of their bright future, something the flames had always been sure to burn to the ground.


End file.
